Til Skånske lovs udgivelseshistorie

Abstract

This article deals with the puzzling fact that the manuscript AM 28 8vo, ‘Codex runicus’, was chosen as base manuscript in the most recent scholarly edition of the old provincial law of Scania, prepared by Johs. Brøndum-Nielsen in 1933. Like all his predecessors as editors of the law, Brøndum-Nielsen wanted to use the manuscript which preserved the most archaic language available, and according to his own research in the nineteen twenties this language was not represented by Codex runicus, but by the totally neglected or misjudged manuscripts Stockholm B 69 and B 74. In a retrospective view of the scholarly editions of the law hitherto published (Stockholm 1676, Copenhagen 1853, Lund 1859 and Copenhagen 1933), Brøndum-Nielsen’s choice would rather seem to be the last stroke in a protracted Swedish-Danish ping-pong match concerning which manuscript of the law was the oldest and had the most archaic language. Inevitably, the only two contemporaries among the editors, the sensitive P.G. Thorsen (1853) and the belligerent C.J. Schlyter (1859), got into a rather unfortunate confrontation, also involving the solitary Danish philologist, Edwin Jessen. The article offers a brief presentation of editors as well as editions, and an attempt is made to identify the historical, ideological, scholarly and/or practical reasoning behind each choice, Brøndum-Nielsen’s in the 1933 edition included. – Codex runicus is introduced separately as a most important, although very
tricky, player in the story.